Category: facebook

Today around seven-in-ten Americans use social media to connect with one another, engage with news content, share information and entertain themselves. Explore the patterns and trends shaping the social media landscape over the past decade below.

Social media use over time

When Pew Research Center began tracking social media adoption in 2005, just 5% of American adults used at least one of these platforms. By 2011 that share had risen to half of all Americans, and today 69% of the public uses some type of social media.

As more Americans have adopted social media, the social media user base has also grown more representative of the broader population. Young adults were among the earliest social media adopters and continue to use these sites at high levels, but usage by older adults has increased in recent years.

Which social media platforms are most popular

Facebook is the most-widely used of the major social media platforms, and its user base is most broadly representative of the population as a whole. Smaller shares of Americans use sites such as Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Who uses each social media platform

Usage of the major social media platforms varies by factors such as age, gender and educational attainment.

How often Americans use social media sites

For many users, social media is part of their daily routine. Roughly three-quarters of Facebook users – and around half of Instagram users – visit these sites at least once a day.

A majority of U.S. adults – 62% – get news on social media, and 18% do so often, according to a new survey by Pew Research Center, conducted in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. In 2012, based on a slightly different question, 49% of U.S. adults reported seeing news on social media.1

But which social media sites have the largest portion of users getting news there? How many get news on multiple social media sites? And to what degree are these news consumers seeking online news out versus happening upon it while doing other things?

As part of an ongoing examination of social media and news, Pew Research Center analyzed the scope and characteristics of social media news consumers across nine social networking sites. This study is based on a survey conducted Jan. 12-Feb. 8, 2016, with 4,654 members of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel.

News plays a varying role across the social networking sites studied.2 Two-thirds of Facebook users (66%) get news on the site, nearly six-in-ten Twitter users (59%) get news on Twitter, and seven-in-ten Reddit users get news on that platform. On Tumblr, the figure sits at 31%, while for the other five social networking sites it is true of only about one-fifth or less of their user bases.

It is also useful to see how, when combined with the sites’ total reach, the proportion of users who gets news on each site translates to U.S. adults overall. Facebook is by far the largest social networking site, reaching 67% of U.S. adults. The two-thirds of Facebook users who get news there, then, amount to 44% of the general population. YouTube has the next greatest reach in terms of general usage, at 48% of U.S. adults. But only about a fifth of its users get news there, which amounts to 10% of the adult population. That puts it on par with Twitter, which has a smaller user base (16% of U.S. adults) but a larger portion getting news there.

The audience overlap

To what extent do the various news audiences on social media overlap? Of those who get news on at least one of the sites, a majority (64%) get news on just one – most commonly Facebook. About a quarter (26%) get news on two of those sites. Just one-in-ten get news on three or more.

Seeking out news online

Differences also emerge in how active or passive each group of news users is in their online news habits more generally. YouTube, Facebook and Instagram news users are more likely to get their news online mostly by chance, when they are online doing other things. Alternatively, the portion of Reddit, Twitter and LinkedIn news users who seek out news online is roughly similar to the portion that happen upon it.3

The demographics of social media news consumers

A look at the demographic characteristics of news consumers on the five social networking sites with the biggest news audiences shows that, while there is some crossover, each site appeals to a somewhat different group. Instagram news consumers stand out from other groups as more likely to be non-white, young and, for all but Facebook, female. LinkedIn news consumers are more likely to have a college degree than news users of the other four platforms; Twitter news users are the second most likely. The demographics of other sites can be found in the Appendix.

Social news consumers and other news platforms

Social media news consumers still get news from a variety of other sources and to a fairly consistent degree across sites. For example, across the five sites with the biggest news audiences, roughly two-in-ten news users of each also get news from nightly network television news; about three-in-ten turn to local TV. One area that saw greater variation was news websites and apps. Roughly half of Twitter and LinkedIn news consumers also get news from news websites and apps, while that is true of one-third of Facebook and YouTube news users.

Of the sites we tracked since 2013, three of eight show an increase in the portion of users who get news there: Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.4

The full 2013-2016 trends for usage and demographics can be found in the Appendix.

In 2012, this was asked over the phone and asked about “seeing” news rather than “getting” news. Additionally, this figure combines items about news on social media generally and news specifically on Twitter. ?

News consumers for each social networking website are defined as those who answered that they “ever get news or news headlines” on each site. News is defined as “information about events and issues that involve more than just your friends or family.” ?

While the portion of Reddit news users who get news online because they are looking for it is 13 percentage points higher than the portion of those users that get news while doing other things online, these numbers are not statistically different due to the small number of Reddit news users in the sample. ?

Twitter’s difference between 2013 and 2016 approaches statistical significance, but does not reach significance with traditional standards. ?

Ever wonder what happens in 2016 on the internet every minute? Here’s a breakdown.

The following infographic from the Pew Research Center illustrates the State of Social Media in the US for 2013. Note the social media platforms that matter are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.

Pew Research Center recently updated their annual look at who is using social media.

It’s the 4th week of 2012 and no one is talking personal or business resolutions any more. I did make a fresh to-do list. It includes refreshing, rethinking, eliminating and replacing. This is where about.me comes in.

I first got wind of about.me from collaborator Laura Bazile in her new year greeting and it caught my eye again on Facebook when I spotted a “hire me” ad that landed on an about.me page.

Turns out that at least 313 of my contacts have about.me profiles. Why?

We designed about.me for ourselves. A lot of us have multiple online profiles scattered across various services, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, and Twitter. And one problem we face is pulling all of this information together to build a single on-line identity — be it for personal use, or to create a professional on-line profile. We’ve focused on enabling you to create your personal splash page, quickly build a personal and dynamic splash page that points visitors to your content from around the web, and understand how many people see your profile, where they’re coming from, and what they do on your page.

The most recent mutation of Facebook seems to have more people in an uproar than after previous mutations. And it’s not over yet (but since social media is always evolving we shouldn’t be surprised).

Next is “Timeline”:

Zuckerberg, Facebook creator explains that Timeline is, “the story of your life,” significantly altering the way people’s information is shown on the world’s leading social network, presenting “all your stories, all your apps, and a new way to express who you are.

As of today:

I am not sure if I will enable Timeline or not for my personal profile but would love to that option for business pages. One could highlight and showcase important business events such as product launches including photos and videos, customer feedback and customer service, events, human resources news and more.

People are considering Google+ as an alternative to Facebook as the recent changes and repeated privacy concerns are leaving some users displeased. I have decided to cautiously use Google+ while I decide how I should use it. I am leaning toward using Google+ as an additional place to have a business profile. A site that feels friendlier than linked in and not as noisy as Facebook. To that end I probably have to go back and rethink my Google+ circles.

It is anything but boring when working in social media and the plethora of choices can only mean that one has to really consider why they are engaged in social media.

Many of our friends administer one or more pages on Facebook, but there is one essential feature Facebook “forgot” to make – the option to get email alerts when somebody posts or comments on one of your pages.

Hyper Alerts is a feature that sends you an email within minutes after a posting – or only a summary each hour, day, week or month if you so prefer.

I did a brief stint in the Public Affairs office of Ford Motor company before social media exploded in society. I am very impressed with Ford’s use of social media. For example, their social media director (first of all they have an executive position slotted for social media) was at Blog World!

A dear friend has an incredible talent for creating beautiful works of art in stained glass.

I offered to create a social media campaign to help get the word out about the holiday ornaments he is now creating.

He’s leery of too much private information being made public via social media so I convinced him to let me create a Facebook gift application so that I could give all of my Facebook friends a piece of his art best suited to their taste.

WASHINGTON­—After a year in which Twitter and Facebook catalyzed protest movements in Iran and Moldova and authoritarian regimes around the world unleashed new tools of Internet control, Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD), Chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (U.S. Helsinki Commission), and Co-Chairman Congressman Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL) will hold a public briefing:

“Twitter against Tyrants: New Media in Authoritarian Regimes”
Thursday, October 22, 2009, 2:00 p.m.
1539 Longworth House Office Building

This briefing will consider the ways in which new media and Internet communication technologies affect the balance of power between human rights activists and authoritarian governments. Panelists will focus on new media’s role in protests and elections, the ways in which it empowers civil society activists, and the darker side: how dictators use new technology to control and repress their citizens.

The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the U.S. Helsinki Commission, is an independent agency of the Federal Government charged with monitoring compliance with the Helsinki Accords and advancing comprehensive security through promotion of human rights, democracy, and economic, environmental and military cooperation in 56 countries. The Commission consists of nine members from the U.S. Senate, nine from the House of Representatives, and one member each from the Departments of State, Defense, and Commerce.